Chapter 6
LUCA
“Lie to me again and you’ll regret it,” I growl, staring down Nico Rossi, my little brother and bane of my existence.
Nico holds up his hands as if in defense, but I can see the pistol at his waistband, the jut of the hilt of the knife down his spine.
“Who’s lyin’?” he drawls, unbothered. “If someone’s taking money off the top of the Hillside fights, it’s no skin off my teeth.”
“Isn’t it? You’re the one overseeing the project, Nico. Father will—”
“Father isn’t going to touch me,” Nico says smugly, leaning forward, and I narrow my eyes, trying to determine if his pupils are normal or not.
My brother doesn’t hesitate to use any and everything available to him as the little brother of the Rossi mob boss.
Of course, Father is still the reigning boss, but secretly I’m running everything behind the scenes. Including the Hillside fights, the ring that Nico had invested us in a few years back. It made money, all right, but at what cost?
We had to have cops in our pocket to make it work, security, a bunch of overhead. And now someone’s skimming money. I hate liars, and if Nico is lying to me again…
“You—”
“I’m not using,” Nico says, apropos of nothing and I glare at him again.
“You fucking better well not be, Nico. You know how Father is about drugs.”
“Yeah, yeah. I know, I know. You know, Luca, you sound more and more like him in your old age.”
I shove Nico, my hands on his chest, but not hard. He stumbles backward, chugging out a laugh/ I know he’s on something, but I can’t prove it.
Not that I’ll have to. Nico will do as he always does and go on a bender. We won’t be able to find him for days and Father will blame it all on me.
Because Nico Rossi does no wrong in my father’s eyes.
And I spoil him myself, I can’t lie. He’s the only thing we have left of Ma.
It doesn’t help that he has her eyes, soft brown with green flecks.
I draw in a breath. “Just keep it together, Nico. And check the books. I’ve been over and over them, I think it’s someone inside.”
Nico blinks, looking concerned for the first time.
“You think I’ve got a rat?”
I sigh. “At least one. The way you run things, I…”
I trail off. It does no good to berate him, not when Father will go behind my back and make sure he has whatever he wants.
“I’ve got it handled, brother. Promise,” Nico says, and his voice is earnest.
I look at him for a moment longer, before sighing and holding my hands up.
He’ll do what he wants, because Nico always does. And Father will cover it up.
“Alright, fine, but I’m overseeing the party tonight.”
“Fine. Can I go now?” Nico asks, bouncing on his heels and I nod sharply. He’s leaving even as I look up.
I watch him go for far too long, biting the insides of my cheeks bloody.
I need to talk to Father. We’ve thrown Nico into a discreet rehab before, when it was bad. I’m worried it’s starting to get bad again.
But it’ll take weeks before Father will believe me.
So it’s best to just get through this party unscathed. And keep Nico’s nose clean. I dress well, but not as sharply as I could. The clientele here is different from a mobster party, where the value of your suit might out your value as a man.
The clientele for this party are hungry for blood and relevance. Once in a while you’ll meet someone interesting, but usually it’s just the locals, wanting a taste of how we live.
So I dress in tailored slacks, a black button-up shirt, and a pair of shoes that cost more than the whole outfit.
I slide into my car, and Diego pulls out ahead of me, working as my security tonight. I keep Diego close, and not just because he’s my best friend. He’s also my best man, the quickest, the most cunning.
Birds of a feather flock together, as they say.
I take off out of the driveway, sliding around backroads without much care before I hit the interstate. I put on the cruise control and slide down the sunroof, loving the breeze in my hair.
I arrive and park, walking slowly up to the gathering. It’s a simple hotel conference room, nothing fancy. We’ve rented out half the hotel, too, but who’s counting?
Enzo Vitale meets me at the archway, holding out his hands for a hug. I lean in, wrinkling my nose at the smell of weed and whiskey on his clothes.
He blinks when he pulls away. “Luca. Is it really you? It’s been an age.”
“Not that long,” I remind him. Then again, he’d been stinking drunk at the last event we were both at.
He shrugs. “These things all blur together.”
With the drugs you take and the booze you drink, it’s lucky you remember to attend at all.
But I don’t say it, keeping up appearances.
I nod. “Don’t they?”
“Nico couldn’t make it?”
I peer down at Enzo. He’s a few inches shorter than my six-foot-four frame, but he doesn’t back down when he meets my eyes, and that’s more than I can say for most men.
“He’ll be along,” I say simply, not giving too much away.
“Keep an eye on him,” Enzo warns, and another man might take it as a challenge.
I don’t. Enzo has always been an ally, as his father was before him.
I just nod sharply and Enzo exits, walking back toward the bar where he’ll order too many whiskies and need to be carried to the car.
Everyone has their own way of coping, I suppose. Mine is work, and there’s plenty of it to be done, sussing out the rat in Nico’s organization.
The Hillside fighting ring is the only cash flow that we let Nico handle. Even Father knows he’s not exactly stable, so he doesn’t give him too much responsibility.
If Nico’s jealous, he doesn’t show it.
He’s just…Nico, and his middle name might as well have been trouble.
I see him squeal up in his newest purchase, an electric blue sports car that could be seen from space. My brother isn’t much for subtlety.
I roll my eyes and walk further into the fray, toward the smell of booze acrid on the air. I need a drink if I’m supposed to remain calm in this environment. Especially with Nico here, probably high on god knows what.
It’s not like Father would allow me to hit him. Even if I wanted to so badly sometimes that my knuckles ached.
I grit my teeth and head to the bar. I order a Scotch on the rocks, and it’s a beautiful amber color when the bartender slides it to me, the ice clinking in the glass.
When I sip it, the alcohol blooms hot on my tongue, streaming down my throat. I lock eyes with a blonde with dark blue eyes. She looks up with me, something like mild interest on her face.
She isn’t the type to wear her heart on her sleeve, it seems, but I’m good at reading people.
She hails the bartender and totters just slightly on her heels. I trail my eyes up her thin body. She’s drunk. Not falling-down drunk, but maybe loose-lipped drunk.
I could take her home, if I wanted.
I can feel that much already. Even if I get what I want from her—information—I could still use her body. She’d let me. The thought should be a rush, but instead, I feel nothing.
I’ve felt nothing for the last three years, it seems.
Not since…
A flash of bright blue eyes, hair that curled at the ends, bouncing around her waist.
I draw in a breath as the woman with a different shade of blue in her eyes flashes a slight smile.
“My name is Maria.”
“Luca.” I don’t give her a last name, but then again, I don’t have to. People know me around here, and it’s getting more and more obvious that I’m taking over my father’s empire.
But Father doesn’t want to publicly announce it. Not yet. He’s biding his time. For what?
Let him keep his secrets. It’s the last bit of control he has.
I force a smile as I look down at the blonde. It isn’t a true blonde, she’s got black roots, but it’s well done, not box dye. It’s a honey blonde instead of that white blonde that’s so popular these days.
She’s pretty, as pretty goes. Not particularly Italian, but that’s not a problem for me. I like women, and something as simple as ethnicity or hair color isn’t going to sway me. And god knows, it’s been a while.
Three years.
I remember trying, one lonely, drunken night, taking a couple women back to my hotel room. I drank too much and kicked them out. Almost felt bad about it after. Their only crime was not being her.
Sophia Bianchi. It’s the only lead I had as I tried to track her. But a week later, she moved out of her apartment, the only link I had to her. She didn’t leave a forwarding address.
Chicago is a big city, but some part of me kept hoping I’d run into her. She’d probably be high up now, wouldn’t she? Lieutenant? Sergeant?
If I did run into her, it would be bad news, but I know a big part of me would just feel excitement.
“Thought your brother was running this,” Maria’s voice is flat, with very little affect.
“Are you disappointed?” I ask, smirking at her over the lip of my glass as I sip my scotch.
She twirls a piece of her honey blonde hair between her manicured fingers, giving me a patented wicked grin.
“I wouldn’t say that,” she drawls, leaning in closer.
She smells floral, all over. An almost cloying scent of roses and lavender.
I could take her home. It’d be easy. Simple. And she doesn’t seem like the type of woman who’d want to go to breakfast after.
I look down at her thin form and suddenly in my mind’s eye there’s a pair of wider hips in my hands.
“Luca,” she moans, turning her head to look at me, a sheen of sweat across her forehead, mouth pouty and parted. I’m buried inside of her, to the hilt, and gritting my teeth so hard I think they might crack.
All I want to do is spill inside her but also, I want to keep going. Want to stay inside her as long as I can, feel this feeling for as long as I can.
Maria frowns and I blink, shaking my head.
“Are you alright?” she asks, and I nod sharply.
“Yeah. Fine. Just need to mingle. You know how it is.”
She looks me up and down, processing the clear rejection with not much emotion. She shrugs.
“Perhaps some other time, then.”
“Perhaps.”
But there won’t be another time. My mind, my body, my soul—it’s filled with nothing but Sophia. A woman with one name. A fucking cop.
It’s been three years. When will I ever move past it?
I make my way to the bathroom, even though I don’t have to go. It’s an excuse to get away from Maria, away from the crowd. As I slip by the throng of people, I catch sight of a pair of wide hips.
It doesn’t exactly stop me in my tracks, but it’s more attractive to me than Maria’s thin frame, so I look. I’m a red-blooded male, why not?
I can’t see her face, and her hair’s wrong, dirty blonde and it’s in a pixie cut instead of long and dark, but her body… God it reminds me of Sophia.
I drive deep inside her, and this is the fourth or fifth time I’ve waken her up for sex, but I can’t seem to help it. I wake up hard against her ass and have to have her.
“Again?” she gasps, and I let out a dark chuckle as I drive deeper.
“Want you as many times as you’ll have me, pixie.”
“You can do whatever you want to me,” she said, her words marked by gasps and moans as I keep fucking her.
I groan, throwing back my head. “Don’t tell me that.”
The memory is so vivid that my dick starts to grow hard and I clear my throat, walking into the bathroom and washing my face.
I look in the mirror.
It’s not her.
It’s never her.